XBanner: Making XDM More Attractive

XBanner turns your boring, staid XDM login screen into one of those cool things you'll want to show all your friends (nonchalantly, of course).

XBanner was invented and designed from
the beginning to serve one purpose—to beautify the login screen
XDM usually generates. This beautification is accomplished by
drawing a piece of text in a very large font, then rendering some
graphic effect on the text and/or the screen background.

Figure 1 shows a plain login screen as displayed by XDM
“straight out of the box”. Linux, which uses plain XDM, has a
similar if not identical login screen. Commercial companies, like
HP and DEC, supply custom XDMs that generate a nice login screen
with the company logo, a background, etc. Figure 2 shows how my
home system greets me when I turn it on. Using XBanner, any system
can look as special as mine with minimal work on your part.

The text graphic rendering effects available in XBanner
include many interesting things. In this article, I describe a
few:

StandOut: This
effect, combined with a proper selection of colors, gives the text
a look resembling that of Motif or MS Windows buttons. Motif adds a
few pixels on the left and top of the button in a lighter color
than the button and a darker shade to the right and bottom of the
button to create a 3D effect. StandOut uses a similar technique on
the entire text. Each letter and symbol appears to be
three-dimensional like the Motif buttons. The thickness of the
letters can be selected.

Backlight: This
effect draws 1-pixel thick lines around the text, giving it many
outlines. If you choose a dark foreground for the text, then have
XBanner generate a color gradient for the outlines going from a
bright color near the letters to the same color as the background
of the screen, the text looks as if it is being illuminated from
behind.

FatText: With the
proper selection of parameters this effect makes your text look fat
rather than flat. Some color combinations can actually make the
text look as if it has round edges rather than sharp. Also, the
FatText color gradient can be instructed to use more than two
colors to get other interesting results.

FgPlasma: XBanner
draws a field of Plasma Clouds, cuts from it a template in the
shape of selected text and places it on the screen. In Figure 2,
the title “Good Guys Free!” is an example of the FgPlasma
rendering effect.

FgGrad: This draws
a color gradient on the text itself. Instead of a plain vertical
bar with serifs, the letter “I” would be striped in different
colors.

Drawing the text is only the first of the two prime jobs
XBanner was designed to do; it can also render a nice background.
Apart from the simple fill-style background, XBanner can generate
color gradients on the background using many different patterns.
Here are some examples:

Fan: This effect
draws a nice fan, centered at the middle of the bottom line of the
screen. The selected color gradient determines the colors of the
fan. See the background of Figure 2 for a sample of the fan
effect.

TopDown /
LeftRight: These create a color gradient going from one
side of the screen to the other.

BgPix: XBanner has
the ability to tile the whole screen with a pixmap (.XPM file)
before it draws the selected text.

Ripples: This
background style has the appearance of ripples in a pond. This
background style, a result of color-cycling (explained below),
produces beautiful effects.

Almost any object involving a color-gradient in XBanner can be
color-cycled, generating a sense of motion. If you cycle the colors
of a Fan background style, the entire fan appears to rotate in one
direction. The color gradient of the
FgGrad effect can also be cycled,
giving a sense of motion to the text. Cycling the PlasmaCloud
effects is also a nice idea. You can cycle the background Plasma,
the foreground Plasma, or even both! I use color-cycling for my
home system login screen, shown in Figure 2. Unfortunately,
color-cycling is not available for hard-copy.

The Ripples background style was specifically designed for
color-cycling. The ripples' wave-fronts move at different speeds,
producing a more realistic look.

Another neat feature of XBanner is the ability to draw a star
on the corners of the text, creating a “glinting” effect that
appears at random locations at random intervals. You can also place
a pixmap or set of pixmaps on the screen, underline any text or
effect, and select many other options.

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